UTM market to reach $7bn by 2016, says Frost & Sullivan

World unified threat management (UTM) products market growth rate has dropped to 20.1% in 2009 compared to 32.2% in 2008, due to recession, according to new analysis from growth partnership company Frost & Sullivan.

The firm expects growth rates to increase in 2010 and 2011 before leveling off as the market rebounds and said that vendors in this space are seeking to stimulate this market with expansions in terms of both regional and target markets.

According to the study, the UTM market has earned revenues of over $1.97bn in 2009 and estimates this to reach approximately $7bn in 2016. The UTM’s strongest value proposition lies in its ability to consolidate multiple security products.

UTM seeks to combine essential and common security functions such as firewall/virtual private network (VPN), intrusion prevention system (IPS), anti-spam, antivirus, content filtering, and even data leakage protection (DLP) or vulnerability management capabilities. Despite these advantages, the functionality offered by competing point products continues to deter customers, the firm said.

The study found that UTM vendors are experiencing difficulty in penetrating the enterprise market as it is a challenge to enable multiple security functions on a single appliance without impeding network performance.

Frost & Sullivan said that further acceptance into the enterprise segment is crucial for sustained long-term growth and vendors looking to penetrate this market have to offer best-of-breed functionality. Small business (SMB) and remote/branch/small/home office (ROBO/SOHO) products are expected to remain as a key segment of the UTM market.

Chris Rodriguez, research analyst at Frost & Sullivan, said: While UTM meets the needs of smaller organisations nicely, these solutions have previously been lacking in enterprise-level performance and features. For vendors that have worked hard to improve in these areas, they must now work to reverse this negative reputation.